Noticias

Binz's nomination to head FERC draws intense scrutiny

Ron Binz, President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has courted controversy just about as long has he has been involved in utility regulation.

In 1984, his first try at a seat on the Colorado Public Utilities Commission was blocked by Republican lawmakers who saw him as too avid a consumer advocate.

Three decades later, Binz is galvanizing opponents and supporters over an appointment to a usually low-profile federal regulatory commission.

Critics see Binz as an activist regulator hostile to fossil fuels. Advocates believe his support of renewable energy and regulatory reform are just what the country needs.

On Tuesday, the 66-year-old Binz is set to appear before a U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on his FERC nomination. The hearing is expected to be fractious.

"Everything has become polarized, even a technical agency like FERC," said Marc Spitzer, a former commissioner. "No one knows what it does, but everyone is lining up."

The commission, which regulates power lines, pipelines and wholesale energy prices, is seen as an emerging force in shaping the nation's energy future.

"The grid is changing, power generation is changing, and the FERC is going to have to deal with that," said Allison Clements, a senior attorney with Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group.

And that, critics and supporters say, is why the nomination has attracted such heat.

"There will definitely be moments where a new chairman — one with clear and definitive opinions — could put his thumb on the scales and make it really uncomfortable for some and not others," said Michael McKenna, a Washington energy lobbyist.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page shot the first salvo, dubbing Binz "the most important and radical Obama nominee you've never heard of."

Landrieu has not yet taken a position, spokesman Matthew Lehner said in an e-mail.

Binz is no stranger to such controversy.

In 1984, Binz, a college math instructor and utility consultant to consumer groups, was nominated to the Colorado PUC by Democratic Gov. Dick Lamm.

Lamm was seeking more consumer representation, but a campaign by the electricity and telephone utility companies thwarted the Binz nomination.

Lamm blamed the electric utility — Public Service Co. of Colorado — saying it had used "sleazy tactics."

Four months later, Lamm made Binz the first director of the state Office of Consumer Counsel.

As consumer counsel, Binz opposed attempts by the telephone utility Mountain Bell to rewrite state laws. He also campaigned to remove the troubled Fort St. Vrain nuclear power plant from customer rates.

The plant was eventually converted to natural gas.

In 2007, Binz got a second chance at the Colorado PUC when Gov. Bill Ritter tapped him to serve as its chairman.

"We were looking to transform the energy dynamic in Colorado," said Ritter, who now heads the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University.

"The goal was to transition our energy portfolio to cleaner, affordable energy," Ritter said. "Ron Binz was part of that."

Under Binz, the commission adopted new energy-efficiency requirements and approved utility plans for the expansion of wind and solar power.

It was, however, Binz's role in the passage and implementation of the Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act that created the most furor.

The law created incentives for Xcel Energy to close old coal-fired plants and switch to natural gas to cut urban pollution.

The Colorado Mining Association and the mining companies in the state opposed the plan.

E-mails obtained by the association under the Colorado Open Records Act — and reviewed by The Denver Post — showed that Binz was involved in negotiating the bill up to its final hours.

"Binz was an activist, negotiating a bill he would then implement," said Amy Olive Cook, energy director at the Independence Institute, a Denver-based free-market think tank.

The mining association's motion for Binz to recuse himself from ruling on the plan at the PUC was rejected by the commission.

The industry sued in district court to block Binz, but a judge upheld the regulator's right to be involved in legislative negotiations.

Binz was key in the negotiations to limit how Xcel could charge customers for construction expenses, said John Nielsen, energy program manager for the environmental group Western Resource Advocates.

"It's wonky, but it's important," Nielsen said.

In the wake of the bill's passage and its implementation, which included closing six coal units and nearly $1 billion in natural-gas investments, Republican legislators filed ethics complaints against Binz.

The Colorado Independent Ethics Commission ruled the following December that Binz had violated ethics rules by accepting $1,000 in travel expenses to a conference from a natural-gas company — but it was not a breach of public trust because Binz received no personal gain.

Since leaving the Colorado utilities commission, Binz has been a prominent author and speaker on utility issues, appearing in forums with executives such as James Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy, the largest U.S. utility.

Binz initiated the Utilities 2020 project to look for ways to change the investor-owned-utility business model with a grant from the San Francisco-based Energy Foundation.

The GreenTech Action Fund — which paid for the public-relations firm for Binz — is a grantee of the Energy Foundation, according to Amy Fuerstenau, the action fund's executive director.

Binz also has advocated that state regulators operate in a "legislative mode" to find solutions to future challenges.

One Binz statement that has drawn fire is that, based on current technology and with no way to capture carbon-dioxide emissions, natural-gas-fired generation will be "a dead end" after 2035.

"The idea of an activist ideologue heading FERC is troubling," said Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative political-action group.

Supporters counter that Binz is just what the FERC needs.

"There is a lot of change coming to the power sector," said Dan Bakal, director of the electric-power program at Ceres, a nonprofit promoting sustainable corporate practices.

"Ron Binz has the experience and skill to deal with that," Bakal said.

The Senate committee has been sifting through Binz's record, said Robert Dillon, a staffer for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the committee's ranking Republican.

"Since he's been in the public spotlight since the 1970s, he's given speeches, interviews, positions," Dillon said. "There is quite a bit of information to go through."

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was for many years as sleepy a backwater agency as there was in Washington, D.C. The commission approved siting and permits for power lines and pipelines. It licensed state and local hydropower projects and regulated wholesale electricity prices and interstate natural gas sales.

But beginning in 2005, the FERC started to become "a big deal," said former commissioner Mark Spitzer.

The Bush administration's 2005 Energy Policy Act directed the commission to expedite oil and gas development permits. Under the Obama administration, concerns about greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change are also impacting the FERC.

In 2011, 42 percent of the nation's electricity came from burning coal, making it the country's largest greenhouse gases source.

Under John Wellinghoff, the outgoing chairman, the FERC took some steps to bolster energy efficiency and management and create market opportunities for new flexible resources to balance the grid.

"We have a 100-year-old electric system," said Allison Clements, director of the Sustainable FERC Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The grid has to be overhauled. We need new transmission and cleaner generation." Mark Jaffe, The Post